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THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS: A VIEW FROM THE BRINK
Thu, 30 Sep 2010 22:27:11

I've been swimming against the current of public opinion in the Big River of Denial too long.

I have to climb out over its failed banks and towel off the illusion that the voting public will wake up from their long midterm nap and keep the relatively sane Democratic Party in control of Congress.

Hope may spring eternal; but those springs have been thoroughly evaporated by the extraordinary heat coming from the Right.

The combination of Super PAC's run by the likes of Karl Rove; suitcases of cash from billionaire bandits, who remain in the shadows thanks to the Bad Boys on the Supreme Court, and the drumbeat of fear and falsehood emanating from the lipstick liars and amoral alter boys on Fox is just too much for our fragile democracy to withstand.

It's happened before.

During the 30's, fascist clerics, hooded racists, armed vigilantes and King Fish dictators strove for the hearts and minds of Americans, mired in a decade long depression. Only World War II and the full employment that came in its wake saved them from that dark crowd.

No wartime prosperity can save us now.

It is, in fact, our endless war against the "terrorists", "insurgents", "militants" and locals who get in the way that has brought us to the brink of financial and moral bankruptcy.

Into this spiritual vacuum have stepped the know-nothings, nay-sayers, homophobes, xenophobes, ayatollahs, misogynists and seditionists, sidelined until now by a bubble economy and a corrupt empire.

I fear that nasty gang is going to have their way for a while; and perhaps a dose of their second-rate minds and third-rate solutions will sober us up.

Perhaps, those springs of hope will flow again, even if it takes the hard reign a comin' to fill them.